"Rawn, Melanie - Dragon Star 2 - Dragon Token" - читать интересную книгу автора (Dragon Stories)

"How dare you lay threatening hands on a Daughter of Meadowlord? You forget yourself! You should be thrown into prison."

All three ladiesЧone of them rubbing her shoulder as if a hatchling dragon had clawed herЧlooked gratified at the prospect.

Halian continued, "But as you are valued by my niece Cluthine and my wife's sister Naydra. . . ."He gestured, and a guard came forward. "Escort him to his quarters."

That was Halian right down to the ground, Rialt thought in digust: he couldn't stay a prince for more than two breaths together. In a similar situation, a single withering phrase from Rohan would make the transgressor slink away wishing he'd never been born; Pol would simply have flattened the culprit with a fist to the jaw. But then, no one would ever have dared put a finger on any lady associated with Rohan or PolЧand not just for fear of the princes, either.

As Rialt was summarily removed from the hall, he caught sight of RinhoePs face: a marvel of affronted dignity marred only by the glee grinning from his pale green eyes.

*

Morning again. Morning of the fourth day since Rohan's death.

I must stop thinking that, Chay told himself, holding his wife more tightly in his arms as they rode. If I don't stop, I'll think of nothing else. But oh, Goddess, it hurts so much.

There was wisdom to the ritual of burning. The daylong fast cleansed body and mind; the gathering of family and castlefolk comforted with a sense of shared grief, even as total silence secluded them one from the other. The endless wait for dawn gave time for thoughts and memories. And the final wafting of ashes on a morning breeze called up by a Sunrunner freed the spirits of the living as well as the dead.

But the ritual deep within the Court of the Storm God had not been that of burning. Chay had not seen his prince consumed by Fire, nor felt the gentle release of the wind. There had been no nightlong silence in which to remember, to allow pain to claim him and then quietly let him go. He had not worked his way from grief that Rohan was dead to gratitude that he had lived. He had not said farewell.

He rode with Tobin wrapped in his arms, as he had during their escape from Radzyn. She was crying again. Despite the hundreds of people around them as they rode through the Court of the Storm God, she hid her face against Chay's shirt and cried.

He felt the raw wound of her grief as keenly as his own. For all the others they had lost, they'd cried in private. For her father, killed by a dragon; for her mother; for their sonsЧhe had held her and wept with her. But they did not have the luxury of solitude now. Chay held her close and said nothing to soothe or silence her. What could he say?

So he stared stolidly at the trail ahead, cradling his wife in his arms. Around them, the wind-carved sandstone rose in irregular layered towers, some thick as castle turrets and others slender as ship masts, struggling to cast shadows in pallid dawnlight. The people of Stronghold and Remagev and RadzynЧriding, borne on litters,

or walkingЧtraced the meandering path among the rocks. It was mindless. One step after another. It left too much room in the brain for thinking.

Tobin finally raised her head. "Where?" she asked, strain roughening her voice and slowing her speech.

"Just coming up on the Sentinel Stone."

"Too slow."

"Don't worry. They won't follow us in."

She twisted to look at his face and ask a silent question with her eyes.

"Pol," he said reluctantly. "Maarken says that he and Kazander rode back to the Harps. They plan some discouragement."

"Idiot!" she hissed.

"Don't fret over it. There's nothing you can do."

"And you?"

"I'm old," he said tersely. Then he smiled, a mere shifting of the exhaustion beneath the dirt and sweat on his face. "They'll be all right. We all will. The Vellant'im won't dare chase us through here. As your father told me the first time we ever rode through this maze, this is one hell of a place to lose a cow."

Tobin gave a snort and subsided. But once her head had fallen back to his shoulder, Chay bit both lips between his teeth. The words had brought a memory of their youth: riding this very trail, hoping for some time alone, unable to escape watchful attendants. All at once a boy had galloped by, yelling like an Isulki warrior, and the servants had taken off in a panic to keep the precious heir to the Desert from killing himself on his new Radzyn stallion.